When cannabis was legalized in the parts of the United States, there were substantial increases in marijuana-related visits to children’s hospitals and calls to poison control centers. Pets are just as vulnerable — just like our human family members, pets are susceptible to getting sick.

There is a growing global trend to consider pets as part of the family. In fact, millions of people around the world love their pets, enjoying their companionship, going for walks, playing and even talking to them

When a dog behaves unnaturally in response to any neurotic, chaotic, or disruptive energy taken on from humans, he tends to look confused because he has nowhere to put the energy that is reverberating within him. He doesn’t really know why he is acting out, nor does his behavior make the least bit of sense to him.

Many have experienced the depth of feeling that can develop between us and our four-legged best friends. What makes my story unique is that my search for a lasting and meaningful connection led me down a path that crossed over the boundaries of reason and concrete reality into the realm of the invisible. My dog Brio inspired me--a born skeptic--to investigate the paranormal.

That animals touch us in a deep, central place is not a modern-day phenomenon, but one that pervades the history of the human-animal relationship. We sense that we can benefit spiritually in our relationship with animals, and we are right. They offer us something fundamental: a direct and immediate sense of both the joy and wonder of creation.

Over the last ten years, it’s estimated there has been a 360% rise in veganism in Britain – around 542,000 people have “gone vegan”. As a nation of animal lovers, with around 44% of homes owning a pet – and somewhere in the region of 8.5m dogs in the UK – it’s only natural this phenomenon should start to spill over into the pet food world.

Cooperation can be found across the animal kingdom, in behaviors such as group hunting, raising of young, and driving away predators. But are these cooperating animals actively coordinating their behaviur, or are they simply acting individually to accomplish the same task at the same time?

If you live with a dog you just know when it’s happy or miserable, don’t you? Of course you do. Even the scientific community, now admits that dogs have emotions – even if scientists can’t directly measure what they are experiencing.

People have had a close bond with domesticated dogs for centuries. In his 1764 Dictionnaire philosophique, Voltaire observed: “It seems that nature has given the dog to man for his defence and for his pleasure. Of all the animals it is the most faithful: it is the best friend man can have.”

A couple of years ago, I met Adam (not his real name) at a farm in Dorset. Adam was 14 and had been excluded from mainstream education due to behavioural difficulties and a disruptive home life. The farm where I met him is not a normal farm, but a social one, where the therapeutic use of farming practices and animal assisted therapy is used...

Dogs’ ancestors in the Americas likely came from Siberia, according to a new study. The study also suggests that these early dog populations almost totally disappeared, but left future generations a cancerous tumor that is still found in their canine descendants today.

Life surrounds us with teachers, if we are but willing to learn. Actually, everyone and everything in our life is our teacher -- they teach by example of something we'd like to attain or something we'd like to abandon. One of my greatest teachers has been my dog, Angel.

Over the years, I’ve seen and felt consistent messages flow from the animals I’ve loved and the thousands of animals I’ve been honored to work with that, when embraced by their humans as truth, have made a positive, life-changing difference in both of their lives. If your animal could write you a love letter, I think it would look something like this...

If you watch kids at a local playground, sooner or later one of them will run around and fall face-first to the ground. For a moment, there’s likely to be silence. Then the child will look around, catch a glimpse of their parent, and finally burst into a deafening wail.

I had the privilege of meeting and communicating with Gable over time, and assisting Jennifer and Gable with their end-of-life conversations and decisions. Gable’s strength, wisdom, and inspiration continue to unfold for Jennifer and for all who knew and loved him. Their relationship continues, even though his body is gone. Here is their story.

It is difficult to refer to what dogs, as a collective, like and dislike and how they behave. Just as humans do, dogs all have their own personalities and learned preferences and so can differ dramatically in how they approach life and what they take from it.

It goes without saying that having a baby is a life changing event. Thankfully, there is a wealth of information about how best to raise this new tiny human. However, there is relatively little information on how to prepare four-legged family members for the new arrival.

The idea of work still tends to evoke particular images of manual and blue-collar jobs, but the realities of livelihoods have always been and continue to be much more diverse. Daily life for wild animals involves an elaborate and constant series of tasks and challenges.

Your animals are amazing hosts and mirrors through which incredible wisdom, inspiration, and answers to your questions can arrive in many ways, including through the genius of symbolism. When you open your mind and set your intention to receive symbolic messages from your animals, the universe will deliver the goods.

The definition of sentient is simply “able to perceive or feel things”. Today most of us would probably also say that animals are able to feel emotion, form attachments and have distinct personalities. Yet for many decades the idea of animals feeling emotions or having personalities was dismissed by behavioural scientists.

I was as skeptical when I loaded Rodney, my cat, into his carrier to take him down to the holistic veterinary clinic where a psychic was seeing animals. I was having some problems with Rodney that my regular vet couldn't help, and I figured, why not give the psychic a shot? I had found a human being who could talk to a cat...

When people who have never had a dog see their dog-owning friends mourn the loss of a pet, they probably think it’s all a bit of an overreaction; after all, it’s “just a dog.” However, those who have loved a dog know the truth: Your own pet is never “just a dog.”

Animals seem to be natural healers. In the Healing Power of Pets, Dr. Marty Becker explores many health benefits of having animal companionship. He cites studies showing that people who have animal companions also tend to have lower blood pressure, less stress...

Written by Jacqueline Boyd, Lecturer in Animal Science, Nottingham Trent University

Every year, the NEC in Birmingham, England, becomes a magnet for dog lovers, as more than 22,000 canines assemble for Crufts. Founded by travelling dog-food salesman Charles Cruft in 1891, Crufts has become one of the world’s largest and most prestigious dog events.

Written by Laura Kehoe, PhD researcher in wildlife conservation and land use, Humboldt University of Berlin

I trampled clumsily through the dense undergrowth, attempting in vain to go a full five minutes without getting snarled in the thorns that threatened my every move. It was my first field mission in the savannahs of the Republic of Guinea. The aim was to record and understand a group of wild chimpanzees who had never been studied before.

Years ago, we believed that we weren’t animals and that animals were here solely for our use. Indeed, a cow was just a walking burger, steak of Sunday roast, keeping itself fresh and tasty ready for when we were hungry.

Ironically, for me, becoming an animal communicator coincided with shifting away from my previous vegan lifestyle. I have had my own deep journey with this question, and perhaps the understandings I have reached with the help of the animals may be helpful for others who are struggling with this issue.

There is a significant increase in the risk of chocolate poisoning in dogs over the festive period, our latest study reveals. Chocolate contains a caffeine-like chemical called theobromine that is toxic to dogs (and cats) because they cannot metabolise it as quickly as humans do.

Dogs have significantly more neurons in their cerebral cortex—”little gray cells” associated with thinking, planning, and complex behavior considered hallmarks of intelligence—than cats, researchers report.

It’s vitally important to learn to differentiate between our own human ideas and thoughts and telepathic communication which comes directly from the animal. This kind of differentiation requires practice and experience; however, there are some...

Dogs have been part of human social groups for at least 30,000 years. So it’s not unreasonable to suppose that we might have had some influence on their behavior, and perhaps their understanding, during that time.

The recent popularity of “designer” dogs, cats, micro-pigs and other pets may seem to suggest that pet keeping is no more than a fad. Indeed, it is often assumed that pets are a Western affectation, a weird relic of the working animals kept by communities of the past.

One of the main reasons for the rise of chronic conditions in both humans and domestic animals is that we are all living longer. Our dogs and cats are living longer than ever before – 16-20 years is not uncommon these days.

Research using surveys of dog owners, suggests that less responsibly bred dogs – including puppy-farmed dogs and those from pet shops – are more likely to be aggressive towards their owners and strangers.

I began to see animals as much more than family members and understood that they were in our lives to help us evolve and heal aspects of ourselves. One of my Native teachers gave us her view on cats...

Everyone thinks that dogs worship their owners – viewing them as gods of some sort. While that may be true in the majority of cases, it isn’t always so. As a veterinarian, I can confirm that sometimes, no matter what, a dog and his person just aren’t going to get along.

Rosie, like a real-life Babe, ran away from an organic piggery when she was only a few days old. She was found wandering in a car park, highly agitated, by a family who took her home and made her their live-in pet.

Talk to any pet owner and you are bound to invoke stories about the joy and companionship of having a pet. But evidence is mounting that the effect of pets extends beyond their owners and can help strengthen the social fabric of local neighbourhoods.

In learning to listen to animals telepathically, we learn to still the mind, to listen with deep presence, and to become open to the realms of magic and the unseen. This can become the foundation of a spiritual practice that can change our perceptions and our lives.

To some people, cats are the perfect pet. Intelligent, elegant, calming companions, capable of dealing with their own exercise and cleaning. To others, they are frustratingly independent, cool and aloof. So what is the true nature of the domestic cat?

Twitter’s been on fire with people amazed by cats that seem compelled to park themselves in squares of tape marked out on the floor. These felines appear powerless to resist the call of the #CatSquare.

Over the past few years, cats have increasingly attracted media attention due to a number of scientific studies reporting that a Toxoplasma Gondii (T. Gondii) infection is linked with mental health issues, including schizophrenia, suicide and intermittent rage disorder.

Nearing the lake on that warm September morning, I heard a tiny mewing sound. My first inclination was to ignore the cries. I've been through enough lately, I thought; I can hardly take care of myself. Meow! Meow! The insistent pleas continued.

I raised my hand in class at the University of Santa Monica and quietly shared that there was something I needed to own. I told the class that I’d had an extraordinary experience of personal healing in my life, and that I was a healer. That I had been working for a number of years on developing and refining my approach...

Anthropologists for the first time have captured on video wild chimpanzee mothers teaching their offspring to use tools to find food. The videos were made at termite mounds in the Nouabalé-Ndoki National Park in the Republic of Congo.

The bird experts and authors of the book Cat Wars recently called for all free-roaming cats to be euthanised or kept on a lead. They argue that cats’ tendency to kill birds and small mammals has lead to a catastrophic decline in the numbers of these creatures.

Dog owners often notice their pets watching televisions, computer screens and tablets. But what is going on in their pooch’s head? Indeed, by tracking their vision using similar methods used on humans, research has found that domestic dogs do prefer certain images and videos.

Given the choice, many dogs prefer praise from their owners rather than food, according to one of the first studies to combine brain-imaging data with behavioral experiments to explore canine reward preferences.

As I became more adept at motivating my horse, focusing her attention, and gaining her respect, relationships at home and work improved. People commented on the change, yet no one could pinpoint what had shifted. The plot thickened as I gained more knowledge about instinctual horse behavior.

Love them or hate them, ring-necked parakeets have invaded Europe and they’re here to stay. Already a staple of many urban parks and gardens around the UK, some of these charismatic bright green birds are now so comfortable in their new surroundings that they will happily sit and feed from your hand.

Mowgli arrived at Best Friends Animal Society in Utah after being rejected by two shelters. On my day for volun­teering, I saw the eight-month-old malamute sitting off by himself, and I walked over to the fence to talk to him. When those mahogany eyes looked deep into my heart and touched my soul, I fell in love.

Imagine you’re a cat, and, every time you meowed, the loud voice of a snooty-sounding British gentleman kindly informed your human guardian of your every thought and feeling (well, the thoughts and feelings you had before you were terrified by the sound of the voice).

It’s hard to avoid stress, and the expectation that we are camels with unbreakable backs. I know this from personal experience as part of the “squeezed generation” with young children, an old parent and a demanding job.

About six months after Morris first ap­peared at Lauren’s door, he started to appear at my door instead. All my life I’d had a cat phobia. Cats terrified me so much that I had recurrent nightmares about a cat jumping from a tall staircase and landing on the back of my neck.

Written by Federico Calboli, Marie Curie research fellow in genetics, University of Helsinki

A German shepherd with a sloping back that was awarded best of breed brought the dog show Crufts in for this year’s annual bout of criticism. Viewers took to social media to accuse the owner of animal cruelty by suggesting that its unusual shape meant the dog must suffer health problems brought on by inbreeding – something the owner denied.

Written by Frank Hailer, Lecturer in Evolutionary Biology, Cardiff University

Dog owners might disagree, but as far as evolutionary biologists are concerned, all dogs are just dogs. It may seem odd that Canis (lupus) familiaris extends from rabbit-sized Chihuahuas to Great Danes which can be almost the size of a small pony, whereas seemingly much smaller differences place many animals into separate species or sub-species.

Written by Jacqueline Boyd, Lecturer in Animal Science, Nottingham Trent University

For most of us, commuting is a task to be endured. Busy, noisy and often cramped, the world’s underground transport systems are places that we humans tolerate as a matter of necessity. But not so for Moscow’s “metro dogs”.

Can dogs tell when we are happy, sad or angry? As a dog owner, I feel confident not only that I can tell what kind of emotional state my pets are in, but also that they respond to my emotions. Yet as a hard-headed scientist, I try to take a more rational and pragmatic view. These personal observations seem more likely to result from my desire for a good relationship with my dogs.

Written by Clive Phillips, The University of Queensland and Sarah Zito, The University of Queensland

Christmas is typically a time for celebrating and spending time with loved ones. But while we party, give lavish presents, and visit our families, we can sometimes overlook how some very important family members — our pets — might be affected.

Anyone who’s watched a cat throwing up after munching on grass knows that our feline friends aren’t natural plant eaters. So you might be surprised to discover that these carnivorous animals share some important genes that are more typically associated with herbivores. And this might help explain why cats aren’t always easy to please when it comes to food.

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